European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, referenda in the UK, as we all know, are a fairly new innovation. The first time in modern history that a referendum was used was in 1975, and their use was opposed quite vigorously by both Attlee and Churchill. They only came into being in 1975—the noble Lord, Lord Radice, gave us a very good history lesson earlier—to get the Labour Party off the hook, because it was deeply divided at that time. One part of the party wanted to be in, and the other part wanted to be out. Harold Wilson, who still stands high in my pantheon of former Labour Prime Ministers, went along with this suggestion, which I do not think he believed in for a minute. He went along with it, however, and the Labour Party—if I remember correctly—came up with the slogan, “Not on Tory terms”, without actually specifying what terms would be acceptable, because that did at least solve the immediate problem that the ones on offer were not acceptable.

I have always disputed the complaint that we are somehow in something that we were not promised. In fact, the whole 1975 referendum campaign, in my part of London, was about what this campaign is about: Brussels. I remember listening to people like Tony Benn and Enoch Powell saying exactly what is being said today—that Brussels would somehow run things. In the end, we had to come to a conclusion, and overall we came to a very clear conclusion in 1975. I can help my noble friend Lord Lawson, who earlier seemed to be searching for a slogan to show that there was something beyond Europe. From history, I commend to him the slogan of the Morning Star in 1975:

“No to a bosses’ Europe; yes to a workers’ world”.

That was meant to show that there was something beyond Europe that was vital and worth us getting.

The difference, of course, as has been said, is that the 1974-75 renegotiation was not the same as the present one: things are now very different. Today’s renegotiation, to be quite honest—which we seem to be in this House at the moment—is also to get the Government off the hook. It is as simple as that. The country is divided; there is a feeling that after 40 years, perhaps we should revisit this and have another go, but in fact, the options are far more limited today. There is really no option for any sensible person other than to maintain, and somehow build on, our relationship with Europe. The debate is about how we influence what we have got. Moreover, this is not the first renegotiation: Mrs Thatcher negotiated our terms in Europe much more fundamentally than this renegotiation will.

One of the delights of a long career in politics is that you can look back to all of the positions you have held—in my case, many have changed over the years—and at the changes in the parties’ positions. When Mrs Thatcher did her renegotiation, the Conservative Party was 100% in favour of Europe. I was in the European Parliament at that time. There was an odd little group called the H-block, led, if I remember correctly, by the late Brian Hord. They were in favour of something different, but overall, the Conservative Party was strongly in favour. The Labour Party was more divided. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, has gone, because it was actually he who turned the Labour Party round more than anyone else. Of all the achievements to which he can lay claim, the foremost was that he was prepared to grasp the question by the throat and he turned the Labour Party round.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned the negotiation by John Major to get Britain out of the social chapter. That was a really brilliant negotiation. Of course, what he conceded was that into the treaty went Strasbourg as the seat of the European Parliament. Tony Blair came into power and said, “We’re going into the social chapter”. The other countries said, “Fine. If you want to, we’ll amend the treaty”. I do not think France is going to say, “We’ll abandon Strasbourg” quite as easily, so be careful what concessions you give along the way.

I shall mention a couple of things concerning the present Bill, neutrally rather than hostilely. The British electorate are a jumble. Frankly, when citizens in Malta, Cyprus and half of Gibraltar can vote, but people who have worked in Britain for 20 years and who happen to have a French passport cannot, we are in an area of lunacy. The only advice I would give is that they should change their nationality. They still have time to do it. I am very willing to give any European Union citizen a quick course on how to change their nationality to become a good Brit, and be able to vote in our referendum. It is actually not very hard if you have a clean record and have been here for a bit of time. My advice to them is to get on board.

On the voting age, have we not got into a mess? We seem to have one age for one set of elections and another age for another set. I say to the Minister and my colleagues that we had better get something sorted out, because what we have does not make sense. We have a very odd collection of different ages. I would not go for 16, but since it seems that half of elections nowadays go for 16, I will restrict myself to saying, “Please sort it out”.

At the end of this debate, we are going to have to decide. I predict a rerun of 1975. I think the establishments of all the major parties will be saying vote yes, and the two outer wings will say vote no. Who are going to be the latter-day successors to J Enoch Powell and AW Benn? I am not going to start speculating. I can think of their names, but I predict that it will be like that. If I remember rightly, only Orkney and the Shetland Islands voted no in the previous referendum. There might be a few more no votes this time, perhaps some in Northern Ireland, because it has a habit of spiting itself. Some places might vote no, but overall I predict there will be an overwhelming yes vote. The TUC has indicated it is onside, as has the CBI. We have set up an all-party campaign, and I am working with my good friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, across the aisle, to deliver Cambridge, one small but important city, for the yes vote. I look forward to getting a yes vote, getting this passed in some form or other and getting on with the job of being good partners in Europe.

Turkey

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the position in the south-eastern town of Cizre, and clearly there are serious circumstances there. From 4 to 12 September the Government imposed a curfew in Cizre. It is important in Turkey, as in any democracy, that elections are free and fair and pass without incident. We have made it clear that the PKK needs to stop its attacks and that the peace process must be resumed immediately. This is in everyone’s interests—it is in the interests of the Government as well as of the PKK and other groups in the wider region. We are following the election process, as we do in any EU candidate country. Monitoring by Turkish parties and civil society is even more important. The UK plans to send two British observers to join the OSCE election observation mission. Practical steps are being taken.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, notwithstanding the considerable achievements of the AKP Government over the past 13 years, the holding of fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power is what defines a democracy. It is apparent to many people outside that the opposition parties in Turkey are not having their rights as rigorously defended as is necessary for a country to be regarded as a full democracy. Will the noble Baroness, through the EU political co-operation procedure and through our embassy, emphasise to the Turkish Government that her friends are looking very carefully at the way in which these elections are conducted?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I agree with every word that my noble friend said. I listened, and I will make sure that his message is amplified through our EU partners.

G20: Turkish Presidency

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support the main aims of the Turkish Presidency of the G20 in 2015.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, we support the Turkish presidency’s priorities of inclusiveness, implementation and investment, and particularly welcome the focus on the implementation of previous G20 commitments. We are liaising closely with the Turkish presidency, and are actively involved in all the G20 working groups, including co-chairing the Energy Sustainability Working Group. A UK official is seconded directly to support the Turkish G20 presidency team.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. As she says, the Turkish presidency is founded on the three “i”s of inclusiveness, implementation and investment, and these aim to ensure that the benefits of growth and prosperity are shared. Indeed, it has been estimated that if all the plans already endorsed by the G8 were carried out, some 2% would be added to the world’s GDP. Can the Minister outline how the Government will work to help the Turkish presidency achieve these aims?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we are at the forefront of implementing a series of commitments. For example, on anti-corruption the UK Anti-Corruption Plan published in December 2014 clearly sets out more than 60 actions for tackling corruption domestically and internationally. My second example is the automatic exchange of tax information, of which the UK is an early implementer, with the first exchange expected in 2017.

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Association Agreement) (Georgia) Order 2015

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the measured and moderate way in which she spoke about these agreements. She will recall that, in a previous life, she appointed me as one of our delegates to the Council of Europe. Since that time, I have managed to become the chairman of the sub-committee on the application of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, where I am privileged to have a Georgian as my vice-chair. I want to take up the point that has been made about not getting too much crossover between the legitimate job of the European Court of Human Rights and that of the European Commission and its annual report.

I speak from long experience of the European Parliament, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, does. The Commission loves to stray well beyond its remit into giving its opinion on many things in the world and is likely to do so. Through the Committee of Ministers mechanism at the Council of Europe, we should be able to ensure that there is some sort of balance and that we do not get into a position where they are both looking at the same thing. There is quite a clear job to do, and I am sure that resources are scarce. I spent 10 years on the liaison committee between the European Parliament and the Council of Europe. There was constant jealousy in the Council of Europe at our budget-raising powers and the fact that the Parliament could raise its own budget, whereas the Council of Europe of course had to negotiate its. None the less, no one has doubted that the European Court of Human Rights has not only the competence but the skill to give the requisite opinions and judgments on human rights issues. We need to be careful that those two are not mixed up.

One common factor of course with all three agreements is that they relate to the scenes of frozen conflicts—Ukraine is, sadly, now in that category of frozen conflict. I think the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, made the point that areas of frozen conflict could leak into the association agreements. I have to tell your Lordships that they can. I was in Moldova, not recently but not that long ago, and it was quite clear that it is part of Moldovan policy to try and bring Transnistria back into the body and that anything that can be done to pursue that aim is done, including encouraging it to export through Moldova itself. So we have to be careful there. We also have to be careful of the integration between Moldova and Romania. There are certain people in Bucharest who see Moldova as being little different from Wales, in terms of it being a country on the fringe that has self-government but which is basically still part of us. We need to keep an eye on that.

We also have to be careful about how the agreement is implemented. The beginning of the recent crisis in Ukraine spun out of the botched way in which the European Union handled the association agreement. That is how it is to my mind, although I know that that is not a universal view. We did not handle it as cleverly as we could have. We have ended up with a president in exile, although I notice that within the past few days, former President Yanukovych has made statements to the effect that he is thinking about going back, so we need to be careful about how we implement this. I am not saying that we should not sign and implement the association agreement, but we should not use it to antagonise—that is the danger.

I do not know whether the Minister met the Georgians who were here a few days ago, but it was quite clear that part of Georgian foreign policy, not unnaturally, is to try and use favourable reflections from Britain and western Europe in its constant battle against Russia and the countries that surround it. Georgia is a rather special case because it neighbours Turkey. The others are very much more in the heart of Europe.

My final point is that if we are going to have peace on this frontier in the end, we need a comprehensive agreement and settlement with Russia. There are too many potential conflicts: look at Latvia and the Russian population there. My own priority, for what it is worth, is that the Baltic states are covered by Article 5, and we must make sure that they stay at the top of our list before we take on any other commitments that we cannot honour. That is crucial. We should not get ourselves into a position where we are giving guarantees or understandings that we know in our own heart we cannot honour. I think that, more or less, we have gone as far as we can. I agree with the President of the European Commission that the time is not right for the extension of Community membership. We have probably bitten off more than we can chew; we certainly do not have the capacity for any more.

Historically, Britain has always been in favour of extending Community membership. One group of people has said that as good members of the European movement—which I am, too—we want to extend the benefits of Europe across Europe. But there is another school of thought, among the anti-European group, which has said that the more we can get in, the nearer we can bring it to collapse. That group also has a point. We have now got to a tipping point where we need to concentrate on integrating the European Union and its near abroad, in a sensible manner, to the not-so near abroad beyond it, whose countries are certainly not candidates for membership in anyone’s cognisance at the moment. These orders are part of that process.

I welcome the orders and I hope that they will be implemented and monitored with the moderation that the Minister’s speech has indicated. I look forward to us giving them our support.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister for her clear explanation of the orders. I do not intend to say very much on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition. We support the orders and are happy to do so today. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. There is a degree of expertise in the Committee that will make this debate look important when it is considered by others outside Parliament.

My first point is one that the Minister mentioned. The countries involved in these association agreements have to have free choice as to whether to reach such agreements, but the opposite is also true. No country should be forced to enter into such an association agreement, but on the other hand, nor should any free and sovereign state be pressured into not doing so, whether by force of arms or by other forms of intimidation. We are therefore content that the countries that we are talking about today are in the position that they find themselves in with regard to these association agreements.

Of course, as the Minister said, our debate takes place against the background of the unfolding situation in Ukraine, and I thank her for keeping us up to date with the position there. The House has debated the extremely critical situation in Ukraine many times in various forms, and will undoubtedly do so again. I hope it does so soon, not least so that the report that the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned—The EU and Russia: Before and Beyond the Crisis in Ukraine, published by the European Union Committee, on which he sat and which received a lot of media publicity earlier this week—can be debated, too.

Today’s Motions are not a reason for holding another debate on Ukraine this afternoon, although the comments that have been made about Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia have been extremely helpful, for me at least, in setting the background to where we are. The other two countries, Moldova and Georgia, as has been made clear, have considerable difficulties of their own. They have parallels, but their situations are of course different from the critical one we all face in Ukraine at present.

On Ukraine, we all hope that the ceasefire agreed in Minsk a fortnight ago now on 12 February, which was due to begin on 15 February, 11 days ago, can be properly implemented. Can the Minister comment on today’s reports, which have not necessarily been confirmed, that both the pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army may be starting to withdraw heavy weapons? Apparently, as of 1 pm, Ukrainian military forces had suffered no fatalities in the previous 48 hours, although several soldiers have apparently been wounded in that time span. A buffer zone of at least 50 kilometres has to be created and monitored by the OSCE, so I was particularly interested by what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, had to say about his recent meeting at the OSCE. Can the Minister comment on those matters?

Some have claimed—the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, came close to it—that the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine has been something of a provocation, at least in part, in terms of the proxy war in eastern Ukraine. The argument goes—the noble Lord put it moderately and well—that the EU, in negotiating such an agreement, sort of poked the bear with a stick, which is one way of putting it, and that signing such an agreement was an act of recklessness by the EU. We do not agree with that analysis. When the House of Commons debated these matters last December, there was a general consensus that this was not the case. The EU association agreement with Ukraine was not rushed in any way. It was not a surprise or a provocation. As I understand it, it had been under discussion for seven years and, interestingly, had been supported by the previous pro-Russian leadership of Ukraine under the last president, to whom the noble Lord referred.

The whole point of such agreements is to give a country access to the European market in exchange for reforms that encourage a democratic, honest and legally robust framework for that country’s future. The point of these agreements is to give access to European markets in exchange for reforms. Given Ukraine’s economic and corruption problems, reforms in the direction of transparency, the rule of law and proper democratic accountability are of great importance. That is the path the present Ukrainian Government want to pursue, but they will of course need considerable help.

Middle East and North Africa

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Risby, for initiating this most welcome debate. I also declare a long interest in Turkey, stretching back politically over 30 years, so I will start my speech with a word about that country.

There are many misconceptions. First, there seems to be a misconception that the problems between the Kurds and the Turks are of recent origin; they go back at least to Ataturk. Indeed, the present Government in Turkey have initiated discussions with the Kurdish population that have gone some way to solving at least some of the outstanding problems. We must remember that the PKK is still listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, the European Union and NATO as well as by Turkey itself. That therefore adds considerable problems to how Turkey deals with a number of the problems on its border, particularly the problem of Kobane.

Let us be clear: the Turkish Government have spent some $4 billion on aid for refugees in this conflict. They have allowed 200,000 citizens of the Kobane region to come into Turkey to live. Carol Batchelor, the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Turkey, was recently quoted as saying that, when it came to saving lives,

“the UN could not catch up with Turkey”.

They have, in other words, done extremely well with the cards that they have got.

Saving Kobane is part of a much bigger and widespread problem. The present Prime Minister, who was Foreign Minister, and the present President, who was Prime Minister, have both addressed this in great detail. One of the problems that Turkey has is that it seems to have made an enemy of absolutely everybody. It has crucially made an enemy of President Assad. I think that we have to start being realistic about Syria. President Assad presided over a regime that was—shall we say—suboptimal, to be kindest about it. None the less, the country was a damn sight more stable then than it is today. People were not being killed in the streets. It is going to survive because it has the support of Russia and Iran; in the present mix-up in that area of the world, President Assad, I predict, is going to come through in the end. It is in our interests to look at that area and see what we can do to try to help Turkey to get back on good terms with the regime in Syria.

I now turn to another subject in the region, and that is human rights. I know that the Minister has recently received a letter from the TUC—I know because it sent me a copy of it—about the human rights situation in Iran, particularly the rights of trade unionists and workers in Iran. I would be interested to hear from the Minister how the Government propose to respond to that letter, because it seems to me that we have a different view of human rights: it really depends on who is violating them, does it not?

If you look at the British papers, you will see quite rightly the absolute outrage over recent beheadings. We all share that outrage, but somehow the newspapers avoided mentioning—maybe they mentioned it on days I did not read them—that more than 100 people have been beheaded in Saudi Arabia within the past 12 months. I am told by the Foreign Office that it makes quiet representations to Saudi Arabia about this, but those are not doing much good, are they? The Saudis are not taking much notice of these representations. We need to look a little more clearly at having a consistent view on human rights and the way we put our human rights case forward.

In short, we cannot rest back on applying a Treaty of Westphalia system to the rest of the world—that is, the system where you say, “Well, countries can do what they like within their borders. If we recognise them as a legitimate Government, they can go round beheading people and do what they like. We won’t intervene”. We cannot do that any more. We do not do it in the European Union. Given the amount of attention that we pay, quite rightly, to human rights in Turkey, it is ironic how little attention we pay to the same subject in many states not that far to the south.

In closing, I suggest that the situation may change in a way we did not really anticipate. The energy scenario, which has of course driven our relations with that part of the world for the past 100 years, is rapidly changing. Many people have not noticed that the United States is no longer a net importer of energy. Many people have not noticed—or, if they have noticed, they have not tied it together—that new technology and the rising price of energy makes it easier to recover energy. The discovery of new energy fields such as the one off Cyprus, the advent of fracking and the developments in physics—I declare an interest as a governor of the pension fund of CERN, which is the major physics laboratory in the world—will probably put the energy crisis behind us in the next 20 to 30 years. That might sound rather astonishing at a time when we are concentrating on it. Of course, this is not a debate on energy, but from all I have heard and seen the energy scenario is changing faster than we realise. As it changes, the need and dependency on the near and Middle East will change significantly to a point where, maybe, we can have some consistency in our approach on human and civil rights, so that we can look forward to a time when we might be able to stand a little taller because we adopt the same principles in dealing with all countries in that region.

Cyprus

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, for securing this very valuable debate. I make my own declaration of interest, as a member of the All-Party Group for the TRNC and as a fairly regular visitor to the TRNC over the past 30 years. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, for his speech, which makes mine seem not quite as controversial as I thought it might be, having heard the earlier contributions.

The first contact I had with the TRNC was with Rauf Denktas, who has already been mentioned—someone who, it behoves us to remember, began his life in the service of the British Crown and who, for all his life, looked to the British Crown to behave a little better than I think it ever really did. The fact of the matter is that the Annan plan, which has often been mentioned, was rejected to an extent because of the European Union. Once the European Union had given way to what was effectively the blackmail of the Greek Government, who said they would sink enlargement if Cyprus was not allowed in, anything that the EU said about only allowing in a united island became null. At that point, the leaders of the Greek community knew that it was very safe to vote no, and of course they immediately went out to encourage the vote against the Annan plan.

I was in Cyprus at the time of the referendum and it was very easy, and I am afraid rather sad, to see what was going on. For the Turkish side of the island, there was a positive gain; for the Greek side, there was no loss. There was nothing to be lost from rejecting the plan. I remember comparing it at the time to an Irish referendum: it is always safe to vote no, because you might get something more. Incidentally, I mean an Irish EU referendum—and a Republic of Ireland EU referendum, just to qualify that. I see the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, looking at me quizzically there.

The EU then became damaged goods. I am afraid that, when you look at the possibility of a settlement in Cyprus, the EU is not seen as an honest broker by the Turkish side of the island, probably with extremely good reason. The United States, until recently, has been a very disinterested player on the scene. I welcome the visit of the US Vice-President, because unless the US gets itself involved, there will not be a settlement. The reality of a settlement is an objective called money, which we often overlook. Unless there is a substantial input of aid from the EU and the US to sort out the problems, particularly of property compensation and the land issues, there will not be a settlement. The refugees, I believe, can be dealt with by saying, “This is the Turkish side of the island, and whoever lives there is who they choose”, but there is a need to sort out the other issues, particularly the European Court of Human Rights judgments—many of them are, frankly, completely perverse but, none the less, they stand there and they have to be unravelled as part of this settlement.

My belief is that we need to ramp up the pressure on Cyprus. One thing the Cypriot Government have known is that the TRNC goes unrecognised. There is no reason why it should not be recognised. If there is going to be no real attempt to build a settlement, then these people in this half of the island have a right to international recognition and what goes with it. There is no reason at all why, if intransigence follows intransigence, we should not say that, in the interests of a level playing field, we will recognise the rights of both sides. There is no reason why we should not say: if the Turkish Cypriots are part of the EU, as Greek Cyprus would say, where are the Turkish representatives in the European Parliament? Where are the nominees from the Turkish community for posts within the EU? Where is the consultation with the Turkish community on engagement with the EU? We have more to do with the Welsh Parliament than the Greek Cypriot Administration do in consulting the Turks, who, they say, are part of the EU.

We need to look at something much more positive from the United Kingdom than a selection of warm words which can easily be forgotten. We have been putting warm words forward for year after year for 40 years. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, said: when the Turkish troops went to Cyprus in 1974, they went to rescue the Turkish community. They were not an invading force; they were a protecting force. Any solution to the problem has to recognise the fact that the Turkish community feels deeply insecure. If the Greek part of the island is happy to say that they have only benevolent intentions, then I put it to them that it is quite reasonable to negotiate a Turkish base in north Cyprus with a time-limited guarantee—say, of 20 years.

I recall a Turkish general saying to me that they could do without the Turkish base there because they would be able to get troops across from Turkey into northern Cyprus while the EU Council of Foreign Ministers was still arguing about which city to meet in. Admittedly, that was a rather cynical view, but one has to realise that Cyprus is much closer to Turkey than to Greece. One also has to realise that it has a long Turkish tradition. It is not a Greek island; anyone who has been round it, who has seen the mosques and the Turkish settlement, will realise that those are as much a legitimate part of a Turkish island as of a Greek island.

I hope that we move forward. I recall for the Minister’s edification the words that she used in the previous debate:

“it is difficult to see how we could realise the full potential of energy from the eastern Mediterranean without a Cyprus settlement”.—[Official Report, 17/6/14; col. GC 76.]

In closing, I would say that the need for energy has now come right up the agenda. I hope that we will be able to use our diplomatic weight, but also use a bit of oomph and power, to get a settlement moving this time. Thank you.

European Union: United Kingdom MEPs

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recent European Union election results, whether they have any plans to co-operate more closely with United Kingdom MEP representatives.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government routinely engage with Members of the European Parliament, particularly with those Members who represent the UK regions. The Government are especially keen to work with those MEPs who recognise the need to respond to voters’ concerns and share our vision of a reformed EU, one that is about openness, competitiveness and fairness.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. Perhaps I may point out that as a substitute member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, when I go to sessions, I am briefed by the ambassador. As a Member of the European Parliament for 25 years, I rarely if ever saw our ambassador. It seems that we pay very little attention to briefing our MEPs in situ on what British interests are. Perhaps I may also point out that MEPs are banned from the House of Commons and are not received in a friendly way here. Indeed, only eight of them have passes. Can we try to build a friendlier relationship between this House and our other elected representatives?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, we keep the Government’s engagement with the European Parliament under constant review and we consider all upcoming events. We engage with our MEPs in a number of ways. That may be by direct engagement with Ministers, through official engagement and, of course, through UKREP. In relation to access to Parliament, the decision not to extend pass access rights to UK MEPs was considered by the Administration Committee during the previous Parliament. As I understand it, the decision was made due to pressures on facilities and the absence of reciprocal arrangements. In March 2011, the Administration Committee decided that as these conditions had not changed, the policy of not extending access rights to MEPs should continue.

Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by recording my interest as a three-time election observer in Ukraine, as well as visiting on a number of occasions and heading up a programme run by the European Parliament Former Members Association called EP to Campus, which sends former Members to universities. We have sent quite a few to universities in Ukraine, particularly in Kiev and Donetsk.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is not in his place. I reflected at one point that sometimes pleasant consequences come out of tragic situations. If the Conservative group ended up in the EPP, I would regard that as being an extremely good solution to us not having anywhere to go at the moment, but we will see about that in due course.

As I mentioned, I have visited Ukraine, including Crimea, on many occasions. It has always been very clear to me that there have always been huge tensions within the different communities in Ukraine and Crimea. Seven or eight years ago in Crimea, when I spoke to Crimean parliamentarians in the autonomous parliament, a number of them, even at that time, expressed great regret that they were in Ukraine at all. The idea of joining Russia has not come up in the past few months; it has simmered away ever since, as one parliamentarian put it to me, the unexpected and somewhat cavalier act of Nikita Khrushchev in removing Crimea from Russia.

What we have to look at going forward, without in any way accepting last Sunday’s referendum as being fair, rational or giving proper opportunities for debate, is a way for the people of Ukraine to express a preference for where they want to be. We must also realise that we have our press in this country but my son, who is living in Moscow at the moment, describes it as Russia trying to stir up tensions in order to create a pretext for further involvement in eastern Ukraine, with the Russian media operating as an anti-western, anti-Ukraine propaganda machine. In other words, they are building up the fires. But there has also been some building up of fires in Washington and in places somewhat closer to home.

The referendum was certainly not conducted in a satisfactory way, but I do not think it becomes a Parliament that is about to give an independence vote to Scotland to say that we cannot devise a formula whereby the people of Ukraine can express their preference for where they would wish their Government ultimately to be based. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, there are many possible solutions on offer. Our job is to look forward and to try to be a facilitator of those negotiations, not to be partisan but more to follow the line of recent statements by the former German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder. He said that the EU has to take some responsibility for the current situation in Ukraine because we have rather polarised it. It is either an association agreement or a customs agreement with Russia. We have to come to a solution which is somewhere in between those two. Moving forward has to be done in a both-ways scenario, as our colleague Mr Schroeder says.

I counsel us to be cautious in the way that we deal with all our relations with Russia. To the people of Russia, what happened in the 1990s was not exactly the triumph that we see here. Many people in Russia do not look on either Mr Gorbachev or Mr Yeltsin as great figures; many of them look on those two people as being less-than-perfect defenders of what they regarded as their pride and their interests. We need to keep that in mind at all times when dealing with Russia.

We also need to look at money-laundering, which was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. We cannot be unaware of the huge amount of eastern European money that is in London. When I think of my late mother-in-law in her late 80s trudging down to the bank with her passport to show that she was not money-laundering and I then look at the huge amount of money coming into this country, into flats and property, and basically depriving Londoners of the ability to have somewhere to live, I wonder whether we are concentrating on the wrong end of that particular spectrum. In some people’s view—and it would not be far from mine—we have also aided the plundering of the wealth of eastern Europe, which has come in here, has done marvels for our balance of payments but has impoverished a lot of people in eastern Europe.

One final problem that I want to deal with is that of corruption in Ukraine. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, mentioned, it has existed under the past five Governments, and it is sad and endemic. I have a number of people whom I would count as friends in Ukraine. Most of them are in what we could call the middle classes: they are doctors and professionals, many of them working in the public sector. The Ukraine Government know that their public servants cannot live on the wages they are paid. A Russian word which is widely used in Ukraine—I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, will forgive me, because my pronunciation is probably awful—is blagodarnost, which means a payment in gratitude; in other words, a bribe. One of my friends who is a doctor would say that she could not live on the salary paid to her by the state. She operates a public clinic for one and a half days a week, and for the other three and a half days, with the open connivance of the Ukrainian state under a variety of Governments, she accepts under-the-counter payments for priority. She runs a sort of Nuffield health service in the Ukrainian medical service. This is not unique; it is a problem which the Ukrainian authorities have got to overcome, because until they do so there will not be investment. While a judge can be bribed to deliver a corrupt decision that will take all your investment away—and there are plenty of examples of people’s investments being corruptly confiscated by court decisions—and until you can get a rule of law that guarantees the sanctity of investment, people will not invest. This is a major problem that Ukraine has to tackle, and it is a problem that goes right back to the Kuchma Government. We can say that the President just out of office, Yanukovych, was corrupt, but he was only following a long pattern. After all, Mrs Tymoshenko was known locally as the “gas queen”. This problem has to be tackled.

That is why we must have a certain amount of humility. One of the things about this debate has been the number of times that the European Union has been mentioned. If anyone believes there would be any future for Britain outside the European Union in influencing Europe, let them read through this debate. I do not think that a single noble Lord even intimated that we would have the same amount of influence outside the European Union. Let us join with our EU partners in trying to mediate between the legitimate interests of a lot of disparate players. We have a role to play as part of a wider European polity. I hope the noble Lord who replies to the debate will be able to assure us that we will fulfil that role.

European Union: Turkish Accession

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage the unblocking of all chapters of the negotiations on Turkish accession to the European Union, and in particular Chapter 31 on foreign, security and defence policy.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is clear that the EU accession process remains the most effective mechanism for continuing reform in Turkey and we remain fully committed to it and supportive of it. The UK will continue to work closely with EU member states and with European institutions to advance Turkey’s progress across all chapters of the acquis, including Chapter 31.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. As a long-standing advocate of Turkey’s accession, may I say that many in Turkey are now beginning to doubt the sincerity of the European Union, which seems to drag out negotiations for a long time? Turkey has been a loyal partner in common, foreign and security policy issues. I hope that the Minister can assure me that the Government will put pressure on other member states, many of which are using specious arguments for keeping Turkey from completing its negotiations, when the truth of the matter is that they do not want Turkey in at all.

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes some important points. I reiterate that the UK remains the strongest supporter of Turkey’s EU membership bid. Turkey itself has repeatedly reaffirmed its strategic goal of joining the European Union, most recently in February of this year. It has the sixth largest economy in Europe and is a key NATO ally. Therefore, we will do all we can to progress its membership.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Bill and look forward to it passing. However, I also look forward to campaigning for a yes vote in the inevitable referendum. Although some people have said, “This isn’t the right Bill”, there is an undercurrent that there should be a referendum, and there is, again, a need to get the will of the British people expressed. That, of course, is one of the inconveniences of living in a democracy—from time to time you just have to let the people say what they want to do. This Bill is a vehicle for that.

I spent 25 years in the European Parliament and the overwhelming impression I got was the failure to understand and to engage between both sides. As an MEP I constantly felt—having, of course, the joy of serving in both parties—that neither party knew what to do with its MEPs. They felt that they were a bit of a nuisance and a bit of an irrelevance. However, seriously, if you look at other European member states you find a much better level of integration between what is going on in Brussels and what is going on in the member state than you do in the United Kingdom. We have consistently failed to engage, and that comes down to very petty things. When do you ever see an MEP wandering around this House? I see the former leader of the Opposition, who will know the Danish Parliament well, and if you go to the Danish Parliament you will often find MEPs wandering around it because there is a structure for them to relate to it and be there. Therefore we need to settle quite a lot of things.

We also need to look at what would happen if people vote no. The question will be, “Do you want to be in the European Union?”. That would start a long process of disengagement, which would be messy. On this side of the House our Conservative Party is not best served by not being in the European People’s Party, which contains a lot of people who have influence. We need to be in a position of influence, because if we were on the path to withdrawal—and I sincerely hope that we are not—the European Parliament plays a very central role in the settlement that is reached, because there will be a huge number of financial overhangs.

I still serve as president of the European Parliament Pension Fund. If you look at the liabilities towards European public servants, they are considerable and would have to be met. Other liabilities that would have to be untangled are also considerable—and, with all of them, the European Parliament would have budgetary authority. My noble friend Lord Tomlinson is much more of an expert than I am on that matter, and he will know that the European Parliament would have a considerable say in what happens.

I draw attention to the role of European civil servants. We sometimes bemoan the fact that British nationals are not getting their fair share in Europe. But what are we offering them in terms of a career? We are saying to the brightest and best of our graduates, “Well, yes, if you go to Europe we might help you and we might not—or we might withdraw tomorrow”. Is that how you get people to the top? There was a time when we held the general secretaryship of the European Commission; indeed, the noble Lord who held that is a Member of this House. We held the general secretaryship of the European Parliament, with the distinguished Sir Julian Priestley, for many years. We have held the general secretaryship of the European Economic and Social Committee. Today we hold no senior positions in any European institutions that would be worthy of the weight of this country; we are slipping behind.

We are always talking about numbers, but this goes beyond numbers. Britain has a moral duty in Europe to lead and to join. There is a long queue of people wanting to join; there is only a small queue—and then not a representative one—of people who want to leave. Our job and our duty is at the heart of Europe, campaigning and helping the emerging democracies in the European Union, setting an example, bringing them forward and welcoming them into the family of European nations. We should not be going on in the xenophobic way that the British press has been so fond of recently, which frankly I feel ashamed to be associated with, when I read it. We need to pass this Bill, we need a positive yes vote, and we need a full and thorough engagement with the European Union.